Here there be tigers

One of the tigers at the National Zoo had a litter of cubs a week or so ago. The zoo set up a webcam to monitor one of the dens but didn't publicly announce it. They did, however, tell FONZ members that it was up. I'm not a FONZ, but hey, I know folks.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GreatCats/Soyonocubcam.cfm

Apparently the mother moves the cubs around so it's a crapshoot as to whether they'll be in the den shown in the webcam. So far this morning, the cam has been showing lots of exciting sleeping tiger action, which is about as thrilling as watching my own cat snoozing in front of the patio door.

In other news, the new bed should be delivered between 1:15 and 4:15 this afternoon. Gonna leave work around 1-ish and head home to strip the old bed down in preparation. Hmm. Does one normally tip furniture delivery drivers?

Back to the grind. Today is another fun day of calling software companies and beating my head against the wall while trying to get them to comprehend what we've got, want, and need to do.

Getting a charge

The old Maha drop-in charger I have for my HT has become somewhat unreliable. Basically, five or ten minutes after I drop a battery pack into it it bleats and indicates that it's done charging. I know there's no way any of the battery packs I have could charge that fast.

This leaves me with only 2 options for charging the Icom's battery packs - the wall charger that came with the HT or the 12v charger for the car. I can't find the wall charger. The car charger, like the wall charger, isn't 'smart' so it'll happily overcharge batteries if left hooked up too long. The radio itself doesn't indicate whether the battery is full so using the car or wall chargers is a guessing game.

Do any of the ham radio folk out there have any suggestions for a reliable drop-in charger for the assorted battery packs used by an Icom T7H? I'm not too keen on another Maha unit since the first one I had decided to smoke shortly after I got it and the replacement they sent is having issues. Basically, I need something that'll handle the original NiCad pack as well as some NiMh ones I've gotten since.